Participatory Evaluation Methodology Research Articles

Towards Decolonization of Evaluation Practices: A Critical Reflection of Participatory Evaluation Methodologies in Less Developed Countries

For many years evaluation practices in less developed countries have been dominated by scientific, top down, quantitative approaches and methodologies. As the result, many evaluation practices in less developed countries have been largely characterized by skewed power relations with poor adoption and utilization of evaluation findings. Several researchers, writers and development professionals agree that participatory evaluation was adopted in Africa and elsewhere in the world as a strategy to address several weaknesses observed in the conventional evaluation practices. Such practices include too much focus on projects and donor funding, lack of inclusion, poor consideration of local variations, lack of transparency, lack of accountability and lack of ‘respect’ to local beneficiaries. Inversely, the adoption of participatory evaluation meant to promote evidence-based evaluation designs, which also pay attention to local variations and contexts and include local evaluators and collective decisions at local level. Therefore, promotion of participatory evaluation means making evaluation practices more culturally sensitive and relevant through the use of credible data. From the emancipatory perspective, participatory evaluation methodologies aim at making evaluation practices more transformational and empowering while improving power relations and collaboration between project stakeholders, capturing and bringing to surface the voices of once marginalized and disadvantaged populations. To a certain extent, the adoption of participatory evaluation methodology has contributed to the improvement of quality and relevance of evaluation and increased utilization of evaluation data and findings in decision making and organizational performance. This paper has generally shown that despite a few recorded successes such as the previous participatory methodologies, there have been internal and external constraints to participatory evaluations. There have been constraints to the participation of the targeted communities in evaluation such as limited lack of community interest, high transaction costs, lack of knowledge and skills and meager budget. At the project level, insufficient budget, limited resources, poor timing of implementation and poor quality of evaluation have constrained management participatory evaluations. This paper takes the position, that regardless of problems hindering the performance of participatory evaluation, its benefits outweigh its limitations in short and the long run. The paper recommends that in order to improve the performance and relevance of participatory evaluation, participatory evaluation needs to be preceded with well thought plans, selecting appropriate designs and methods to fit the local situations.

Evaluating Women's Empowerment: Experimenting with a Creative Participatory Self-evaluation Methodology in Papua New Guinea

This article introduces a participatory evaluation methodology that can be used with very low literacy groups of women to capture change experienced in their voice, participation, and decision-making abilities at the household and community levels. Central to this methodology is the process utilised to enable a personal determination of the level of change that has taken place according to individual baselines and circumstances, and using this information to present a more accurate picture of how much change has occurred for some women versus others and use percentage break-ups to show the different change-level-groups of women in a community. Whereas one can easily make the mistake of generalising change levels for all the women based on the responses of a few outspoken ones, this evaluation methodology captures the richness and diversity that exists even among a small group of women. Utilising such an evaluation approach makes one recognise the complexities that come with measuring change in women's voice, participation and decision-making in very low literacy settings. Developed in haste and used for an internal CARE International end-of-project evaluation in early 2014, the author shares her original experience of utilising this new self-developed participatory evaluation methodology. The article is sequenced so that the reader is presented with the circumstances out of which this evaluation methodology was developed, the benefits discovered from utilising it, shortfalls of the original methodology, and improvements that will be made to further develop and strengthen the methodology.

Lessons learned from the application of a participatory evaluation methodology to Healthy Municipalities, Cities and Communities initiatives in selected countries of the Americas

Health promotion has made significant strides in the past few decades in the Americas. Creating a healthy and supportive setting, also known as the settings approach, continues to be one of the most widely used health promotion strategies. Interest in evaluating the effectiveness of these strategies has been increasing greatly in the past few years. Participatory evaluation holds great promise for helping to generate this evidence and promote understanding of the factors that affect, positively or negatively, the advances of health promotion in the Region. During 2004-2006, a Participatory Evaluation methodology was introduced into several countries in the Americas through formal trainings conducted by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in collaboration with country partners. This article summarizes the main lessons learned from the application of the participatory evaluation methodology in various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Factors affecting the evaluation of the initiatives were identified at multiple levels (individual, community, organizational, political, economic, etc.). Specific issues that were addressed included the political context, turnover of personnel in key institutions, concerns related to the effectiveness of participatory processes, and the existence of strong and sustained leadership at the country level. These factors are intertwined and affect each other in very complex ways, a fact that was reflected in the municipalities' experiences with participatory evaluation. Challenges included the ability to secure resources for the evaluation, the time needed to conclude the process, and working in an intersectoral manner. However, participating municipalities reported that the process of implementing a participatory evaluation and working with various stakeholders had an empowering effect: communities and stakeholders were more willing and interested in participating in health promotion initiatives in a sustained manner; alliances and intersectoral collaboration were strengthened; communication channels were opened; and municipalities were stimulated to review their planning and implementation processes in order to more appropriately incorporate health promotion principles. The article concludes with recommendations to improve the planning and implementation process of participatory evaluation efforts.

A case study of participatory evaluation in Haiti

AbstractHaitian staff members of nongovernmental organizations are trained in participatory evaluation methodology and then apply their training in facilitating the evaluation of fifteen grassroots projects. This case study reviews the lessons learned, the key outcomes, and some limitations of the process.

Process Evaluation: A Field Method for Tracking Those Elusive Development Results

ABSTRACT This paper presents process evaluation methodology (PEM), a field-based participatory evaluation methodology, and its application in the Nepal Health Development Project (NHDP) funded by CIDA. The authors assert that Process Evaluation is an effective evaluation tool for use within a results-based management (RBM) framework. In particular, it is applicable to development programs that intend to enhance the capacity of individuals, organizations, and systems.